Search - Incredible String Band :: Circle Is Unbroken: Live & Studio 1967-1972

Only for those who don't have the original albums....

Southern Slim | Memphis, USA | 03/21/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I was dissapointed to say the least, being a long time String Band collector - I was under the impression that this was something new - unearthed from the archives. These discs are the same as "The Chelsea Sessions" combined with "First Girl I Loved - Live in Canada" - my mistake for buying it to begin with without checking the tracklisting. The only saving grace is the inclusion of "All Too Much For Me/Take Your Burden To The Lord/Light From The Lighthouse" on the first disc and the fiddle tune "Hag With The Money" on Disc 2. Be aware that "Ithkos" is left off this new set (probably 'cause it's over 10 minutes long) - You are now forewarned - but by all means get it if you don't have the other 2 - don't make the same mistake I did. That said, All ISB albums are worth having. Just be aware that this release is nothing new just a repackaging with some bonus cuts"

Finally on CD in 2002

Bruce P. Barten | Saint Paul, MN United States | 02/15/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"`Lover Man' is a lively tune. Tell me about your treehouse. "And the garden where your love grows among the cabbages and greens. ... Tell me about your lover man. Talking about him, you know I'm talking about him." It is a different context from normal popular music, but unlikely to be very far below the surface.



`Born In Your Town' goes sadly, sadly into some burden that involves "six stringas at my hands do the mourning." Or morning, no more to be dreaming. Wings of an albatross join hair of the goats as they walk to the island. Clouds echo on. We have all seen clouds before.



`First Girl I Loved' is about the only Incredible String Band song that I heard Judy Collins sing. "And you're probably married now, house and car and all" was expected to be the normal ambition for girls. It could work for first boy, too, but the "sick, sad morning" alternative seems more likely now as 51 percent of women in the United States are not living with a spouse. "I never slept with you, though we must have made love to you a thousand times. We were just young, didn't have no place to go." Goodbye gets right to some other woman, "maybve someday to bear babies by me. She is



"Gently Tender" is about rain. The guitar and bongo are almost as lively as "Lover Man" was. Then flutes come in before "See the past tense quietly go." "Now all my wine is water and my gills are clean. She gave to me good loving.



I remember Winnie the Pooh singing something like "How sweet to be a cloud" when a helium balloon was trying to bring Pooh up to the honey in a tree where the bees were becoming suspicious. "But the other clouds don't like me. . . . It doesn't matter how much I try, I can't get the first little tear." When the Incredible String Band tries to talk to the cloud, it asks, "Can't you see that I am the prettiest little chick cloud." Then the big cloud and rain came along, singing, "Float with me to distant lands wondrous and fair."



"Blues For the Muse" uses guitar and harmonica, so "don't let the dreams get in your eyes, because obviously, the sun rise because she knows how to play. ... I think I'll try cloud walking, it's just my face you see here talking, and it's just a guitar singing and I have to let her have her way ... But it's alright, you're in the graveyard now."



"The Eyes of Hate" is another downer. "Listen. Hear the rollers. Servant of fate or fate for a servant."



"The Mad Hatter's Song" is about the land of the blind, trying to find realness. "Do what like, do what you can. Live 'til you die, you poor little man." Calling Prometheus a problem child still struggling with his brains runs into an archer, the arrow, and the uncertain sign.



"Alice is a Long Time Gone" starts out with a white rabbit, but the sad song is "Sweet Alice is a long time gone." "I'd wish you back the way you were."



"See Your Face and Know You." Bad karma round me, and the black suit swain. "I feel like Ali Baba when he quit the forty thieves." It sounds more like sitar than guitar. "I'd leave here running because walking's too slow" is also the theme of "Key To The Highway" which Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton did back in those days.



"Frutch" "Even if she was German and I was Dutch, she wouldn't shoot me. ... Shot me last Tuesday." The logic of this song seems to be entwined with the guitar and harmonica like an early Dylan song that was more likely to be part of a bootleg concert tape than a studio recording. The Incredible String Band managed to record `Frutch' in The Chelsea Demo Sessions, 1967, but they probavly dropped the song after that because it was too difficult to repeat how spontaneously the things in that song came together the first two or three times they did it.



`The Iron Stone' is seriously about a stone that fell to the earth from the moon, and I am finding out that this really happens when craters were formed on the moon, some rocks get knocked so far by the impact that they subsequently fall to earth.



"God Dog" is about a dog that is white as the breeze. The dog walks on water, but won't sweep chimneys or husk corn, but she is the best little dog that that has ever been born. ... But she will not learn language." The music sounds like old, old English flute tunes to me, as pleasant as can be.



The bonus track, `All Too Much for Me' is about "Lost my cool you see." It was recorded in 1968, possibly a year after the rest of the Chelsea Demo Sessions, 1967. There is no break in the guitar going from that song to `Take Your Burden To The Lord.' Blind Willie Johnson gets credit for that song, and there is a version of `Take Your Burden To The Lord and Leave It There' on the 2-CD set THE COMPLETE BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON. I'm not sure if `Light From the Lighthouse' also comes from him. It reminds me of `Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam' which kids did in Sunday School when I was growing up.



Disc Two - Live In Canada, 1972, comes from a tape recorded during a North American tour. The first song, `Cousin Caterpillar' is announced as a medium old song, about two years. It was on `The Big Huge,' but I don't know when you could buy that. The CD was released in 2002, just in time for me to get back into songs I'd heard before but didn't own. There is a book, beGLAD An Incredible String Band Compendium edited by Adrian Whittaker that is not clear about the date on that album, probably 1968, when two records were originally a single release: "We knew somebody called Wee Tam, in Edinburgh. It seemed like it was a good idea in terms of like, one person looking up at the stars; Wee Tam and the Big Huge. Just like the vastness of the universe. Again, very light, not intended to be terribly heavy." (p. 104).



`I Know That Man' is cheerful enough, too.



`First Girl I Loved' is a bossa nova song in concert, which is sure to make most people glad that they got the original version on Disc One. It shows a very professional sense of musicianship to be able to do a very popular song as something else, and the bossa nova version is something else in my judgment.



`Everything's Fine Right Now' sounds familiar to me by now. The rest of the songs are still like new songs for me, except a `Black Jack Davey' just before the bonus tracks."